Digitising Physical Activity and Sport in London

4 February 2019

Digitising Physical Activity and Sport in London

London Sport believe that every Londoner should have the option to search, find and book a physical activity opportunity that inspires them to become active. Not only do we aim to pro-actively reach out to inactive Londoners with the right opportunity, we aim to motivate inactive residents through digital marketing support. Effectively digitising social prescribing to support Londoners into physical activity at scale.

London Sport have developed two digital products and a behaviour change support service that all harness the power of open activity data. We enable London based providers to easily market their opportunities at no-cost and to erode some of the barriers that stop Londoners from finding and participating in these opportunities. The products and services that we have developed are:

Open Sessions

Open Sessions is a free to use platform that enables sport and activity providers to publish their sessions in the required Open Data standard and access thousands of customers local to them through the apps and services that use this publicly available data. We are helping activity providers to thrive whilst opening up thousands of opportunities to those seeking to get physically active.

Get Active

Get Active is a free to use activity finder for Londoners and social prescribers to search, find and book the right activity, at the right time, price and location. This removes key barriers for people to become active. Get Active is ‘powered’ by publicly available data from a range of sources including small community providers who use Open Sessions, free sessions from GoodGym, Ourparks and Parkrun, through to large leisure providers such as Better, Fusion and Everyone Active. Get Active makes it easier for everyone to find an activity session.

Digital Behaviour Change Campaigns

We deliver digital behaviour change campaigns to inspire and support Londoner’s to find and join local activity sessions. We use targeted advertising on Facebook and Instagram to reach a less active audience and inspire and motivate them to start an activity search. Followed by personalised one-to-one behaviour change support to help build their confidence, answer their questions and assist them to join an activity near them.

Our progress to date

London Sport has achieved the following to date:

2,000 registered community sport providers on Open Sessions. With over 50% actively publishing physical activity sessions.

In excess of 200,000 opportunities taking place in London that are publicly available for physical activity platforms to use, such as Get Active.

For our products and services to be successful, both Londoners searching for activities and for providers marketing opportunities need to gain value. To ensure both ‘searchers’ and ‘providers’ gain value we are working towards two broad aims:

Aim 1: Londoners looking to become physically active, or individuals supported by others, must be able to find an opportunity that is at the right time, price and local to them.

There is currently in excess of two hundred thousand opportunities now publicly available to search through Get Active. We recognize there are far more exciting and inspiring opportunities happening every day across London that need to be available on Get Active. These providers need to be supported to sign up for, and successfully use Open Sessions to give individuals a greater choice of opportunities to become physically active.

Aim 2: Deliver digital behaviour campaigns that reach, engage and support less active Londoners to take the first steps to being more active.

As more physical activity opportunity data becomes publicly available, we have a role to play in attracting more people to search, find book these opportunities. Individuals who are already interested in becoming physically active will be able to use Get Active and other services that use open opportunity data to find the right opportunity for them. Individuals who are inactive and do not currently have physical activity ‘on their radar’ will need to be reached through targeted marketing, motivated to sign up to activity and finally supported and inspired to attend.